Cosmos Laundromat

I haven’t seen this posted yet, so I figured I would.

I have been watching the weeklys and think that this is really shaping up. The first chapter should be beautiful.

I’ve been following the weeklies, but hadn’t noticed the trailer was out. Thanks for posting it.

BTW, is the lack of an apostrophe in “Cosmos” deliberate?

Steve S

The trailer doesn’t give much, but the visuals already look a ton better than the ones from Sintel (as expected from a modern render engine like Cycles).

Victor for instance would be very competitive in terms of looks with modern day Pixar movies (because for one thing, Pixar’s animated humans have apparently not changed a whole lot in the last 20 years).

Not sure about the acting though, but it appears they chose a pretty moody scene for the trailer so that may be a factor.

Yeah, without wanting to be a downer, this trailer is not giving us much at the moment. As Ace mentioned, there is some cool rendering and the fur/smoke effects are pretty cool from the standpoint of rendering… but from the standpoint of someone evaluating CL as something worth watching, I’m not seeing the pull.

Looking forward to the August release because I’m confident there is much more “Wow” in the past year’s work than that.

In my opinion, this is a trailer/teaser cut properly. A trailer should ignite intrigue and some emotion, all while giving away very little of the plot and story. You never want a trailer to reveal something before the audience has had a chance to absorb it in it’s completed state - that is only more true when it comes to a short, simply because it has that much less content due to time restraints. Interstellar was one the the best cut trailers I have see in a very long time for that exact reason.

Perhaps the issue is not that it gives the whole thing away, but it gives a tad too little of a clue as to the scale and depth of the movie.

I just got back from seeing Tomorrowland and I recall the teaser for that hinting at something much grander in the end. I know there’s some really good shots in CS judging from the weeklies (which glimpses of could’ve made it a lot better).

I agree, but you also want a trailer/teaser to make the audience desire watching the full film from which it was cut. That is the whole point of it. You don’t want to give away too much, but by giving them nothing, the audience isn’t left wanting - they’re left confused and/or disinterested.

This trailer… well, it had no real hook to grab me. It looks visually interesting from the perspective of a Blender user interested in seeing what Cycles can accomplish given time/effort. However from the perspective of someone looking for a short to watch, the trailer just doesn’t do much for me.

Granted, it’s hard to make a teaser for a trailer for a film. I wouldn’t want to the job of doing that - the very format of what I’m cutting from makes the job damned difficult.

The teaser for that was damned brilliant. Short, powerful, and gave away almost nothing whilst still making you want to see the rest of the film. Most teasers (professional, indie, or otherwise) don’t stand up well against that one :slight_smile:

I got these 4 things from it: Frank’s a sheep, but he’s so much more than that, he’s a pessimist and doesn’t believe he is anything more than he is assumed to be, then something spectacular happens. That’s enough for me, but I guess I can understand if people want to know “what happens to him”. But that, again, in my opinion, would reveal too much. I think you hit it on the head though, it’s hard to cut a trailer for a preview of a feature film without giving away what they are previewing in the short. Honestly though, the work put into this, from story to production is fantastic. They should be nothing bit proud of what they have put into it - I can’t wait for the finished intro, and hopefully the story can continue from there.

My hat goes off to the BF and the BI staff and animators, devs working around the clock there. The quality of these renders are amazing and beautiful, to be honest they have turned out much better than I expected. This trailer though does nothing for me. After following the progress on the cloud I have seen some very interesting things happening. But as they weren’t in this trailer, I felt it has missed a perfect opportunity to get more people interested in it. I know there are differences of opinion and that is great, but nothing in that trailer moved me to want to see anymore. In fact as mentioned above I honestly was left feeling… WTF? and I never say that. Once again renderings were great and perfect for a tech preview for Siggraph this year. It was a pity I feel that only these scenes were chosen for the trailer. For example: You could have had quick 2-3 second shots of the tree trunk being dragged behind the sheep, then perhaps a close up shot of the washer drum glistening and descending amongst the clouds cut to the scenes used in the trailer, but after the sheep running scene then cut to a close up of the the rope breaking, with the final scene of the red head dude at the end. I don’t know??? Something like this would have captured my interest much more than, “You are much more than a sheep… How do you know?” line. Just saying

yeah… well…hmmm…
I’m not going to say what I really think and why for fear of upsetting people, but I will say I find this disappointing to behold all things considered and just leave it at that…

My thoughts are about the same as the rest. Visuals look really good, but if I wasn’t a Blender user it wouldn’t give me that “oh, I can’t wait to see that!” feeling – at least not from that teaser. Since Gooseberry is going to be a pilot to get funding for a feature-length film, I’m really hoping it doesn’t turn out to be too esoteric for mainstream audiences like many of the past projects have been.

Hey there ! I understand the frustration not to see more or be more teased. Those 5 shots are our very first V1 final renders. We fought very hard to finish them and present a good preview of the quality we’re after. But we simply couldn’t put some other shots in the trailer because there was nothing else close to being finished. So we tried to make something intriguing without giving away too much the small story we have.
And regarding the esoteric VS mainstream thing, well, I think you can have both. But maybe we’re not good enough :slight_smile: At least we try ! And it’s risky for sure…
Cheers

It´s not Cosmo´s like in something belonging to Cosmo Kramer,
it´s Cosmos, like in the universe
hope that sorted it out
:slight_smile:

While we all appreciate team’s hard work, this should not be an excuse for not doing your homework! If a movie is going to be an art house movie, funded out of our own pockets or having some angel investor pouring money into the project - that’s no problem. However, when you guys are targeting crowdfunding and mainstream audience, you should really look up to movies that made money. Some maybe were panned by critics, some maybe somewhat shallow, but when it comes to raising / making money, a movie has to appeal to wide audience, and teasers / trailers about nothing aren’t going to cut it.

It’s quite irresponsible to say “oh well, maybe we aren’t good enough, but here is the trailer”. Better show stills at final quality, or tech videos, rather than “trailer” that leaves audience feeling “meh, another one of those open movies that doesn’t deliver”.

Note that BBB remains the top movie from BF. Why not to look up to it and try recreating success formula?

Anyhow, it’s my 2c. Take it with a grain of salt.

I think one of the issues is with language. As a native speaker, it feels a little clunky, which might also attribute why it doesn’t feel quite right for viewers.

First bit of critique with which I agree. In retrospect, it might’ve been better spoken with the natural Dutch accent of the actor, to give a background for the unusual choice of phrases.
However, hopefully when you see the full episode in its broader context, this will be less of an issue.

BTW, the character animation in the trailer has already been improved upon and updated. The acting in the final movie will give the performance more nuance.

We are trying to make the best movie possible, and to please the maximum amount of people. We really are !
I am really trying to make a movie that would get into the feelings and emotions of the maximum amount of people. BBB to me is not the type of movies I’m making. We were trying to build a dramatic story for a feature film, and we can just show it’s opening scene… It’s not even a short-film on it’s own, we have to remember that.

I was chosen to direct this project based on my previous works, and I stand by them. That’s my vision. At least I try to be true to it. It’s very risky and complex to please people. And I’m sure that if you try to please people you try to copy-paste “working” things (and big studios are already doing that, and it’s not working great either…) At least to me, most of these movies are boring copies of well know recipes for success. And they still often fail…

So we have the chance to try to be original, to create something unique, that you never saw, or experienced with very little ressources. That’s a very tough challenge, and we are all thrilled by it !
It may sound pretentious to you, but to me, trying to make something as good as Pixar’s or Sony’s is way more pretentious (or irresponsible) than trying to be ourselves and claim “we may not be as good as them”…

Anyway, I really hope you’ll like the movie. That it would not feel as an “arty-pice-of-s***” and that you’ll have a great 10 minutes experience ! And that you may want to the rest of it !!

Honestly, the queen’s english isn’t all that different from the language we speak in our former British colony over here… Dialog seems fine in the context. Maybe it’s because of the definitive nature that victor speaks in? Ex. “…and you are… you are Franck” - Normally he would ask “what’s your name?”, but he doesn’t need to because he clearly already knows Franck even if the reverse is not true. “You are so much more than just a sheep, aren’t you?” - he is making a statement that he knows to be true because of who he is, but is also inviting Franck in to the discussion to get him to realize the truth and that he finally has found someone who understands him, since he is trying to talk him off the ledge (literally) after all. Seems structurally fine to me, and contextually it makes sense. Unless you are just talking about accents, and that simply is not fair.

Anyhow, people are getting overly specific with their critiques of this trailer/teaser in my honest opinion, which shouldn’t come as a surprise on here… I guess. I hate when movies reveal too much… the whole issue with “all the good parts were in the trailer”. Again, I think this is giving me just enough intrigue and visual interest to want to see more. Remember that a trailer is typically about a minute in length for a 2-3 hour movie. This is a 10 minute chapter. How much content can we expect before too much is revealed? Some people have suggested showing the washing machine tumbler in the sky… and what? give away what the strange device hanging on Franck is, or give away the connecting fiber between the different dimensional lives and movie title? That would, again in my opinion, be revealing something I feel should happen in context of the full chapter release. The mystery of what the colourful dust and clouds are/what he is running from.

I think maybe this should be relabelled as a “teaser” and people would have a better time with it. Also, the first chapter is kind of functioning as an extended trailer/prelude, as the hope is for continued support for the project, where the “trailer”/teaser is to give people a date and a sneak peak at what things will look like, while providing some mystery around what the story could be about.

I like what we all have here, and as much as I enjoyed BBB, I am glad this is not that.

And that’s awesome. I don’t know how the whole short will feel like, maybe I will like it, maybe not. That’s not the point I was making.

There are a lot of quality, intriguing, smart, etc. dramatic movies with trailers that make you want to see the whole thing. This trailer doesn’t. Cosmos Laundromat might the that very short animated movie that will bring BF / BI / Blender to the stardom and might be critically acclaimed and all. The trailer however doesn’t make people want to see the whole thing, as others already indicated in the thread.

The point is that maybe it’s a good idea to watch what big movies did with its trailers/teasers and take some notes from it? It’s not really about the story (or you deviating from your vision). It’s about how to cut it to make it appealing to viewer.